Conventionally, there have been developed various kinds of cameras in which a number of video cameras are accommodated in a casing to pick up an image of all directions or of whole circumference simultaneously.
Specifically, for example, in order to obtain an image of wide range such as a panoramic view when a certain point in space is set as a viewpoint and an image of its circumference is picked up on the horizontal plane, as shown in FIGS. 8 and 9, there are disposed four video cameras 1, 2, 3, and 4 around a point I at equal intervals, in which each optical axis of lenses 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the respective video cameras 1, 2, 3, and 4 is fixed in emitting directions.
An image of 360° can be obtained by the above four cameras 1, 2, 3, and 4 with a portion 10 of each image pickup area 9 being overlapped and then by putting together the overlapped portions.
However, in the above-described conventional image pickup device, each horizontal angle of view of video cameras 1, 2, 3, and 4 is required to be 90° or more, and as shown in FIG. 9, what is called parallax occurs in the portion 10 where the two image pickup areas 9 of video cameras 3, 4 overlap.
Since the value of parallax differs depending on the distance between a camera and an object, when the respective images taken by the cameras 3 and 4 are put together, the obtained image varies according to the reference position determined within the overlapped portion 10.
Specifically, in order that images including parallax are put together for practical use, the reference position is required to be determined according to judgment in which an important part of the image is visually judged by an editor. Accordingly, it has been difficult to combine video images automatically, and which becomes an obstacle to automatic processing of the picked-up image.
In order to solve the above-described problems, according to the present invention, there is provided an image pickup device in which an image of wide range picked-up by a plurality of cameras is obtained by preventing occurrence of the parallax.